Tag Archives: Stern Grove

Amid the dark skies on a rainy day when observers set out to count birds in San Francisco, there was an ominous sign — a flock of about 27 crows.

The Golden Gate Audubon Society for the last 28 years has documented the numbers and types of birds in The City and on the Peninsula.

In the 1980s, crows and ravens were not even on the checklist of about 50 types of birds that more than 100 observers saw during the count. The once-rare predators are known for sabotaging other birds’ eggs and chicks.

The American Crows on Tuesday hid in the tops of eucalyptus trees at Stern Grove and almost went unnoticed until their caws disrupted the stillness around Pine Lake.

Dan Murphy, who helped start the San Francisco chapter of the society, said last year the group documented 413 American Crows and 616 ravens, which also used to be uncommon.

“I’d say 27 at the least,” yelled a binocular-wearing Murphy, while the flock swarmed the sky. “They’re at the top of the food chain. … It might not be a good thing.”

As for the implications of the soaring number of crows, Murphy says he will leave that up to the experts.

He and his group of eight others — among 16 teams scattered throughout The City and a boat in the Bay — document everything they see.

In the afternoon, Murphy’s group was about halfway through their portion of the bird count and had seen species that ran the gamut. That’s when they spotted a White-Throated Sparrow, a bird that nests all over the East Coast but never on the West Coast.

“It’s been years since I’ve seen one of those,” said Tom Bacon, who was known among the group for hearing and naming the birds before he sees them.

The details of who saw what would be hashed out later during a dinner — inside a warm building, not out in the rain. The full tally from the annual count will be completed within a few weeks, Murphy said.

The CETO Unit – a fully submerged buoy tethered to a pump on the seabed. Image courtesy of AREA. In an Australian-first, wave energy is supplying electricity to the national grid as a result of Australia’s investment in a broad range of renewable energy technologies. Minister for Industry and Science Ian Macfarlane officially switched on […]

Kansas City, MO – Infegy, a provider of social media intelligence technology for marketing and research professionals, today released a report of “The World’s 50 Most Popular Brands of 2014.” The year-over-year report is based on data compiled through Infegy’s flagship product, Infegy Atlas, a next-generation analytics platform leveraging advanced algorithm […]

Overlooked Deductions May Cost You Thousands Millions of Americans face a challenge in meeting their budgets every month – not just financially, but also in their time budgets, says investment advisor Reid Abedeen. “Knowledge is power and time is often money, but what if you don’t have the time to empower yourself with knowledge? For […]

Twitter TWTR +0.72% remains my favourite social network by far. Working out why I like it is sometimes hard, and there are times when it frustrates me beyond belief, but generally I live on it more than almost any other online service. What’s interesting to me, as someone who ranks Linkedin as his least favourite […]

by Seth About to be celebrated all over the world for the first time, tomorrow is annual Ruckusmaker Day. Tomorrow would have been Steve Jobs’ 60th birthday. Steve’s contribution wasn’t invention. Technology breakthroughs didn’t came out of his workbench the way they did from Land or Tesla. Instead, his contribution was to have a point […]